Blood Roots

by Richie Tankersley Cusick

  Olivia looked quickly at her plate, refusing to give him the satisfaction of embarrassing her.

  “And I thought I heard someone on the balcony last night,” she said evenly. “Just outside my room.”

  The eyebrow raised in interest. He gave an almost imperceptible nod. “The house does have a past. A lot of tragedies can happen in a century or so.”

  “So what are you saying? That there are ghosts?”

  He did smile then, a slow show of humor that moved his shoulders in a silent laugh. “Ghosts would be the least of your worries.” With one quick movement he stubbed out his cigarette on the rim of his plate. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t you want me to show you around?” With a grin, Skyler opened the French doors and slipped outside, leaving her no choice but to follow.

  They stepped out onto the veranda, onto old, worn bricks sunk to ground level. Ferns and lichen had taken over the crevices, and climbing roses clung tenaciously to parts of the house, as if their vines and scarlet flowers were the only things holding the walls and columns in place. Weeds stood nearly knee high, and the lawns were an impossible snarl of unkempt trees and flowers and shrubbery. The air was warm and wet, and ponderous gray clouds hung in sheets around the house.

  “It’s so dark out here.” Olivia huddled near the doorway, reluctant to leave the comforting light of the dining room.

  “It’s always dark,” Skyler murmured. “Even when the sun’s out … even on the brightest day. Look …”

  Uneasily she did so, at the trees clawing the walls, the honeysuckle and wisteria draping the rails and columns, the moss cascading from the huge serpentine limbs of the oaks.

  “The place just … disappears.” Skyler walked a few feet ahead, and his voice was an eerie echo in the mist. “Swallowed up. Whole and alive. Even at noon, it’s dark at Devereaux House. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If it’s really here at all?”

  Olivia pressed back against the wall, forcing calm into her voice. “Is this what you wanted me to see?”

  He cast a quick look back over his shoulder. “No. This way.”

  She watched uncertainly as he headed off through the weeds. When it became obvious that he wasn’t going to turn around or wait, she trailed him around the corner of the house. Drizzle clung to her like clammy skin. She tried to wipe it from her face with the back of her sleeve, but it stuck there. Skyler paused in the backyard and swept one arm in the direction of the outbuildings she’d noticed earlier from the upstairs gallery.

  “A lot of the original buildings are still standing. That’s the kitchen there. And the smokehouse behind it. We still use it to preserve our meat. The other one was used for the overseer’s office. Farther back are the slave cabins … and what’s left of the stables and carriage house.”

  She nodded, gazing off toward the other side of the house. “What’s over there? Behind all those trees?”

  “The gardens. And past there’s the bayou—it winds clear off around behind the plantation. Not a place you’d like to get … stuck in.” A slow smile started across his face, but he turned and walked on.

  “Where are we going now?” Olivia called after him.

  “You’ll see.”

  She hesitated, then unwillingly followed him again. They walked quite a long way this time, along a worn path that wound through weeds and woods, among scattered outbuildings, and then angled off sharply across a short, stubbled field. The ground began to feel wet and soggy underfoot, and within minutes Olivia spotted a wide band of sluggish brown water overhung by mossy trees and pocked with stagnant pools of green scum. Skyler clambered down the embankment and came out onto a narrow wooden pier. There were several boats tied there, and he held out his hand to her.

  Olivia stopped, watching him uncertainly. His lips were pressed together in a smile, and he looked up at her calmly.

  “Where are we going?” she demanded.

  His smile never wavered. “It’s a surprise.”

  As she gazed into his eyes and felt herself take a cautious step toward him, she somehow forced herself to stop.

  “No,” she said. “Not until you tell me what we’re doing.”

  Something flickered in his face. Olivia never saw him move back up onto the embankment—suddenly he was just there, pressing her tightly back against a tree, and she could feel his strength, his warmth, along the whole front of her body.

  “Come on.” His voice was low, calm. “There’s someone I want you to meet. That’s all.”

  “What are you doing, Skyler?”

  It was a woman who spoke angrily from the path behind them, and as Skyler whirled around, a pair of hands snatched Olivia before she could even move.

  The woman was surprisingly, frighteningly strong.

  As Olivia struggled, the woman’s hold tightened, and her black, black eyes pierced Olivia with their coldness. Her full red skirt hung to her ankles, the torn fabric as dirty as her bare feet. A thin peasant blouse fell loosely off her shoulders, revealing most of her full, ripe breasts, and her black hair rippled to her tiny waist. She had skin the color of caramel, and a strange, exotic face, and Olivia knew at once that this was the woman she’d heard arguing with Skyler in the child’s empty bedroom upstairs. As Olivia continued to stare back at her, something seemed to move around the woman’s neck, buried deep, deep in the tangled mass of her thick hair.

  “So …” the woman hissed. Her eyes flashed like daggers between Olivia and Skyler, who was now looking rather bored and standing off to one side.

  But Olivia couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s neck, and suddenly, to her horror, she saw a huge black snake uncoil itself and begin to slide down one of the woman’s arms straight toward her. Frantically, Olivia tried to break loose. She felt the grip on her arms tighten painfully, and then without warning, Skyler’s arms were around her, pulling her away. Olivia was shaking all over. For a brief moment, Skyler held her against his chest, but then abruptly released her again, his expression half amused, half annoyed.

  “Looking for me?” He turned to the woman, his voice smooth. “Olivia, I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure—the rare and wonderful pleasure—of meeting Mathilde.”

  He was standing just behind Olivia now. She felt him move slightly against her back, felt him rest one arm upon her shoulder, felt his fingers trailing slowly down her spine. She shivered, confused, not wanting him to touch her, not wanting him to let her go.

  “Mathilde, this is Olivia,” Skyler said. “She’s going to be … working with us.”

  Again Olivia felt his hand move slowly up the length of her back, and in spite of herself, she took a quick intake of breath. He looked down at her with a lazy smile.

  “It’s about the girl,” Mathilde snapped, ignoring the introductions. “That half-wit—”

  “Helen,” he corrected her patiently. “She has a name, you know. It’s Helen—”

  “Well, she’s gone.”

  “Gone—” His voice went abruptly hard. “What do you mean—she can’t be gone.” His arms slid away, and he squeezed Olivia’s shoulders once, briefly, as he started toward Mathilde. “She has to be around here somewhere. Yoly just took her to her room. She can’t have gotten far—”

  In one fluid movement Mathilde slid up against him, one leg rubbing slowly along his thigh. “I told you,” she murmured, sounding smug and pleased, “I told you there’d be trouble once she found the dead one—”

  “Shut up, Mathilde. You’re much too talkative this morning.”

  Skyler pushed Mathilde away, and they hurried out of sight, leaving Olivia behind. A cold feeling of unease settled in her stomach, and she stood for a moment staring off across the bayou, staring down at the rickety little dock.

  “I told you there’d be trouble once she found the dead one …”

  Mathilde’s words hung in the sticky air, and Olivia leaned back against the tree again, thinking. She recalled the conversation she’d overheard last n
ight outside the dining room—the voices, urgent and upset. The gentle tone of the man she hadn’t yet seen, discussing some kind of accident. “Helen found her … she must have fallen …” And then Miss Rose’s reply: “Fallen … or jumped?”

  And there were other things about that peculiar conversation … things that hadn’t made any sense to her then, that were certainly none of her business—things that had faded from her memory during the strange course of the night. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the exact words, but they seemed to be just out of mind’s reach. In frustration she concentrated instead on the stranger’s voice … his soft Southern drawl … the way he’d sounded so concerned … and suddenly she heard him speaking again, like a soft, sad ghost—“She never realized what was happening to her.”

  The sound of the water brought her back sharply to the present. Olivia glanced down at the pier and saw restless little waves lapping at the shoreline. Several trees overhanging the bayou began to rustle softly, as though something invisible had passed beneath them. She squinted her eyes, trying to see to the other side of the water, but the banks were so overgrown with brush and shadows almost anything could have been there without her knowing. She felt vulnerable standing there, surrounded by hundreds of hiding places. Rubbing goose bumps from her arms, Olivia went back to the house.

  There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Pausing in the yard, Olivia looked up at the galleries, searching the rows of windows, hearing nothing. She went into the house, but when no one answered any of her knocks on the closed doors, she decided to search the rooms for herself.

  The main floor was laid out like the upstairs, three rooms on each side of a central corridor, only these hallway accesses were unlocked. Each set of three rooms also opened freely into one another and out onto the veranda that completely encircled the house. A shabby parlor lay at one front corner of the downstairs; directly behind that, between the parlor and the dining room, was a library in equally sorry shape, its shelved books warped from years of damp. Olivia slipped across the hall from the parlor and opened the double doors there, catching her breath at the sight that lay before her.

  It was the most beautiful room she had ever seen.

  A ballroom. Painted completely white.

  It was a magnificent chamber, the doors that would normally have connected the two oversized rooms having been removed. And even though dust had settled thickly over every inch of surface, the faded whiteness of its walls and floor reflected softly in the gloom, giving the whole room a radiance that was almost ethereal.

  Olivia stood entranced, unable to move.

  Sheer white curtains hung at the windows … white Corinthian columns stretched from floorboards to ceiling. There were friezes and medallions, archways and hand-carved moldings, all of them white, and a white marble fireplace with a gilded mirror above, the room lying hushed and secretive deep within, frozen like time in the shining glass.

  Olivia walked to the mirror and gazed long, long into its pristine stillness.

  Behind her she heard the doors to the hall shut softly.

  She heard footsteps coming toward her, slowly, across the floor …

  The faint sound of music in the air …

  Gasping, she turned around to an empty room … then back again, puzzled, to the mirror.

  The footsteps paused in back of her.

  The soft pressure of a hand rested lightly on her shoulder.

  Olivia stared wide-eyed at her reflection.

  But nobody else was there.

  9

  “YOLY?” OLIVIA WHISPERED. “SKYLER?”

  And of course it would be Skyler, she thought quickly, of course, it would be just like him to follow her here, to try and frighten her.

  “You might as well come out,” she said aloud, but her voice shook violently, echoing back to her, again and again, from the pale white walls.

  She forced herself to turn once more, to face the room … but it was all glowing, open space, nowhere for anyone to hide. She braced her back up against the mantel and let her eyes rove slowly across the curtained windows … the high, round columns … the doors that led out into the hall.

  She was sure she’d left those doors open … only now they were closed.

  “May I have this dance?”

  “Oh, God, who’s there?”

  Gasping, Olivia looked wildly around, seeing nothing, no one at all—but the voice was so soft, so polite, smiling in the air just beside her, and she knew she hadn’t imagined it, couldn’t have imagined it, but it was impossible—she was alone and the room was deserted.

  Whirling back to the mirror, she gripped the mantel with both hands, leaning forward until her face practically touched the glass. And “May I have this dance?” he whispered again, and somehow she knew that no one else could hear him, that she was the only one, don’t be frightened … don’t be afraid … and his soft warm breath brushing her cheek, the touch of his hand shy and persuasive upon her shoulder … “May I have this dance … may I …”

  And she could see the room reflected behind her, shimmering with a brilliant white light, caught for an eternity between his silent question and her answer …

  And “yes,” Olivia murmured, “yes … I’d be so delighted …”

  Music flowed through her then, sweet and full, whirling her out into the room, around and around, in a dizzying dream. She spun and she twirled, and there was girlish laughter and clinking crystal and the deep, deep echo of men sharing stories … gliding past windows, and lace curtains blowing, warm gentle air and magnolias flowing in from the soft, damp night … and oh, the joy as she floated past that mirror, the faces reflected there, the smiles, and the glorious future—and him, tall and gallant in his ruffled shirt and black coat, boots gleaming at his knees, dark hair glowing in candlelight—but his back’s to the mirror, I can’t see his face, the deep fierce love in his eyes … burning in my heart, pressed against me, promises—and “will you meet me …” his voice urgent and longing, “will you …” and “yes,” she murmured, over and over again, “oh, yes … yes … tonight …”

  “Tonight,” Olivia whispered, and she opened her eyes.

  Her hands were pressed against the mirror. As she pulled them back slowly, she saw the dusty imprints of her fingers left there upon the glass. She stared for a moment at her dirty palms, then wiped them on her skirt. She leaned forward once more and studied her pale reflection.

  She’d been crying.

  There were long, wet streaks down her cheeks, and her hair was wet where it lay against the side of her face.

  Olivia whirled from the mantel, her heart racing.

  The ballroom lay empty and white and still.

  The doors were standing open, and she could see shadows in the hallway beyond.

  “Yoly?” she whispered fearfully. “Skyler?”

  She’d called to them before, she knew … but when?

  How long have I been in here … I must have dozed off or fallen into some daydream … just like I used to do—days and nights gone by—losing track of time—of waking—of sleeping—I don’t remember, I don’t quite remember …

  Trembling, she hurried from the room and down the passageway, trying the parlor, the library, the dining room all over again.

  “Miss Rose! Yoly! Somebody!”

  Where was everyone? The house was silent as a tomb, everyone disappeared, everyone gone—or maybe they’re all dead—maybe they died while I was sleeping, someone killed them, one by one by one, creeping from room to room, quiet as shadows, but they didn’t know about me, they didn’t kill me, because I wasn’t here, I was in some other place, not home like the others—nobody home, Olivia, nobody home—but I am home now, I am home and why can’t I remember—

  In panic, Olivia raced from the dining room and threw herself at the last door directly across the hall.

  “Miss Rose! Mathilde! Helen!”

  The door wouldn’t move, and she banged on it with her fists. Then, without warni
ng, it flew open, spilling her roughly inside.

  She managed to catch herself before she fell.

  And then she stood in surprise and forgot about being afraid.

  Olivia hadn’t expected to find a bedroom down here on the main floor, but as the gloomy interior came into focus, she saw that it was a grand place—much grander than any of the rooms above. The whole thing was done in shades of purple, from the satin comforter on the bed, to the draperies at the round-headed French doors, to the crushed velvet of the chairs and footstool and the bench tucked discreetly beneath the dressing table. Even the wallpaper was patterned with violets, the mosquito netting the same lacy lilac as the canopy, and there were lavender rugs, plum-colored slippers on the floor, and a dressing gown of pale orchid.

  Olivia walked through the room in a daze, gliding her fingers over the coverlet on the bed, picking up a pearl-handled hairbrush from the dressing table, sorting through dainty handkerchiefs and hair ribbons and amethyst combs. She paused beside a table and glanced at the tiny silver frames so carefully arranged there, and that’s when she saw the picture.

  It had obviously been taken somewhere on the grounds, for the chimneys and ornate entablature of Devereaux House were just visible in the background, looming up between mossy trees.

  Olivia picked up the photograph and studied its faded black-and-white details.

  Two women were looking at the camera—the older one regal and beautiful, the younger tense and unsmiling. As Olivia stared hard into their faces, a painful twinge of recognition cut through her, and she gripped the frame tightly.

  Mama …

  And yet it was Mama with a face Olivia had never known, had never seen—so young and so pretty—no years and years of hate and hardness carved into her face, into her eyes—Mama before the bitterness, before the demons had come—Mama before the torment, the torture, the anguish …

  Olivia held the photograph closer, overcome with sadness. Mama’s face was so innocent, and yet at the same time, there was already an unhappiness showing there, deep and hurting, as if something had just upset her whole world.